Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it, follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.

Our rules have been updated and given their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!

We here at PA are a nice, friendly, bunch that want to help each other get better at SC2, typically through light-hearted pokes and jabs. But some players require a little more hands-on training. So, I have decided to create a Karate Kid style teacher and student program known hence forth as the Crane Kick program. Basically, one of our higher league players will personally train a lower level one on some aspect of their game they want to improve.

Fill out this form to join in! After filling out the form, look at the list of players found here and simply PM the coach/player you are interested in working with. Set up a time/date, communication software, and discuss what you want to learn/teach. GLHF!

Please read the following details to help things go smoothly:

Spoiler:

All games will include 4 PA players in a non-ladder 1v1, 2 high ranked Miyagis and 2 low ranked Daniel-sans. The mentors will be in a special chat room with their students in mumble/skype giving them advice in real-time. All four start in the same chat channel then go into 2 different channels when the game starts. The two higher ranked people are observers that only follow the vision of their "student". Sound like fun? Again, fill out this form to join in! Find players/coaches here!

Players should:
-specify to their coach what they want to learn (stutter step, macro, X build order)
-already understand the basics of hotkeys, assigning groups, map pings
-listen and follow the advice of the coach
-watch their replays!
-take what they've learned and practice on their own time
-be respectful of their coaches and opponents time

Coaches should:
-not look at full map vision (cheater!)
-don't yell or harass the student, especially in tense battle situations
-offer insight as to WHY you want to do things and certain times
-explain what to look for when scouting builds
-be available for more than one game if possible
-offer follow up sessions if needed
-focus on one to two things at a time (micro, macro, build order, etc)

Let's see if we can get this thing off the ground and really help each other out more!

I want to play SC2 awesome like everyone else!

So, the SC2 thread goes a million miles per hour and will leave you in the dust if you aren't prepared. All things are open to discussion here from build orders, practice partners, race match-ups, tournament talk, and general bizarre Korean stuff. In order to keep up, I highly recommend you check out the following resources:

Spoiler:

General

Team Liquid. Team Liquid is the biggest Starcraft related fan site out on the Internet today. They follow everything Starcraft related including the pro scene. Many great articles, forums, and information can be found here. A must bookmark for any Starcraft fan.

The Day[9] Daily Live Stream. Sean "Day9" Plott is an 11 year Starcraft veteran, so he knows his shit. He does a live stream Sunday through Thursday that airs 7pm PST/10pm EST. If you miss a stream, you can watch it, and every other streams he's ever done, in his archives. BOOKMARK HIS SITES! You will not be disappointed.

Starcraft II Liquipedia. Team Liquid has created a wikipedia site for everything SC2 related. This will be updated as time goes on and all information found here should be legit as possible.

Learn from the Pros with Mr. B Mr. Bitter aka Flabulous gets lessons from pros about how to play Starcraft and streams the whole thing for our learnings. He started with 12 weeks of zerg goodness and is now moving onto terran and protoss.

1) Log into Battle.net and join channel PA (on the NA realm). We all hang out there. Chat, 1v1 lobbies, and team shenanigans are always going on!

2) Sign up for a replay site such as gamereplays.org or drop.sc. This is a site where you can upload your replays. The perfect way to share your replays with the thread and get advice on how to get better. Gamereplays lets you post the cool banner that you frequently see on the internets and drop.sc lets you upload replays without having to create a new account.

3) Register with the PA SC2 1v1 Ranking site. Sign up for this awesome site to see where you stand amongst fellow PA members. Remember, this is important in the nurturing and expanding of your e-peen. Add yourself by clicking on [Manage Characters] on the top right side.

4) Sign up for the PA mumble page. Sign up if you want to chat with fellow PA users during games or watching tournaments. Thanks to Exoplasm for hosting the service and providing the step-by-step process for installing mumble.

JK. I like watching Starcraft instead. Where can I watch some good games?

Spoiler:

Major tournaments. Starcraft is e-sports. Follow these major tournaments and you will not be disappoint.

The GSL. The premiere korean starcraft 2 league. Where the best go to play. Casted by Tastosis, the casting archon.

The TSL. Team Liquid's major tournament where foreigners stomp koreans and everyone attributes it to lag.

Major League Gaming. North American e-sports powerhouse now features Starcraft 2 (as long as their stream is online). "tahts halo dont worry".

North American Star League. The upstart league headed by fan-favorites Incontrol and Gretorp. $400k up for grabs in the first season alone.

IGN Pro League. Everyone's getting into e-sports, even IGN! 16 of the top players from North America duking it out for fabulous prizes.

Streams. Perhaps you prefer something more intimate. Maybe watching starcraft 2 like it's Being John Malkovich? Thanks to the power of the Internet, there are infinity streams available for your voyeuristic pleasure. Here are our favorites.

We hypothesized that 6 weeks of bupropion sustained release (SR) treatment would decrease craving for Internet game play as well as video game cue-induced brain activity in patients with Internet video game addiction (IAG).

The Starcraft 2 editor can go fuck itself. Specifically the data editor. I'm cool with the terrain and trigger editors, but the data editor can go fuck itself.

Was the simplicity of the Warcraft 3 object editor too easy to use? Was setting stuff like damage directly on the unit a bad thing? You don't even set it on the weapon. The weapon makes an effect and the effect does the damage. And if it's an attack with a projectile, then the weapon has an effect that just launches the projectile and then that has the effect that does the damage.

And then for the tooltip it doesn't automatically figure it out from the effect or have manual data entry. You pick an effect for the tooltip to pull data from. So potentially you can have a completely unrelated effect for the tooltip numbers. What's the point of being able to make tooltips that lie to you?

I'm sure someone all this complexity is good for someone out there, but it sure as hell ain't me that just wants to try and make a TD because that seems like something somewhat simple.

Also, why just four cliff layers in SC2? You can't even have units or structures on the bottom one. Meanwhile, I fired up the WC3 editor and could have up to 15 cliff layers.

PvP on Metropolis, some diamond tried to wall off like a FFE. It felt dirty to 4gate and have a proxy pylon in his main, but he was asking for it! I can't let stupid play like that go unpunished.

Are people trying to FFE in non PvZ matchups now or something?

Someone's gotta learn 'em.

Just the other day someone tried to canrush my building nat, on Metalopolis, so I waited for the two pylons and three cans to finish; aborted the nat and double-exp:ed the gold and third. Felt mighty smug about myself until I was reminded he could warp-in at those two pylons...

"In this discussion of copyright it's actually appropriate to call it theft:
This music is being (preemptively) removed from the public domain; it's being stolen from the people."

Zergs are the most BM against Terran. The people who are the worst are always the Zerg.

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Yeah, considering he's made over $100,000 of prize winnings alone in a year of playing Starcraft, it seems a little silly to stop now. By the time he goes back to school, he'll have it completely paid off with a lot of money to spare.

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Don't let it happen. 14 pool/16 hatch and send two drones down to lay down the hatch. If he concedes the hatch without a fight and if he hasn't laid down a nexus or additional pylons at his main, then patrol your 2nd drone at the bottom of the ramp.

If it does happen, cancel the hatch, build it somewhere else, spread a creep tumour and build a spine, then move the spine to the top of your ramp to kill the pylons. Take your natural after that. You'll be behind but it is still possible to salvage the game.

The Starcraft 2 editor can go fuck itself. Specifically the data editor. I'm cool with the terrain and trigger editors, but the data editor can go fuck itself.

Was the simplicity of the Warcraft 3 object editor too easy to use? Was setting stuff like damage directly on the unit a bad thing? You don't even set it on the weapon. The weapon makes an effect and the effect does the damage. And if it's an attack with a projectile, then the weapon has an effect that just launches the projectile and then that has the effect that does the damage.

And then for the tooltip it doesn't automatically figure it out from the effect or have manual data entry. You pick an effect for the tooltip to pull data from. So potentially you can have a completely unrelated effect for the tooltip numbers. What's the point of being able to make tooltips that lie to you?

I'm sure someone all this complexity is good for someone out there, but it sure as hell ain't me that just wants to try and make a TD because that seems like something somewhat simple.

Also, why just four cliff layers in SC2? You can't even have units or structures on the bottom one. Meanwhile, I fired up the WC3 editor and could have up to 15 cliff layers.

I want to say its because the Warcraft 3 setting had a lot of hills and stuff, and making believable mountain ranges required a lot of cliff edges stacked on top of one another.